PENDLE rises 40% as Upbit listing fuels recovery attempt

Pendle, the decentralised finance protocol that’s riding the tokenization wave across the crypto space, is one of the top-performing altcoins in the past 24 hours.

The protocol’s native token PENDLE, which offers holders access to the trading of future yield, was up 42% at the time of writing to hover near $2.75. The intraday high was above $3.02.

PENDLE remains 29% down this past week and is well below its all-time high of $7.50 reached on April 11.

However, the latest upside is significant as it pushes bulls to the key price level of $3.00. Recent declines had also seen a similar bounce.

Specifically, Pendle’s price is above the support area below which bears tore into buyers as the price plummeted towards its lowest level since mid-January. The crash to year-to-date lows happened alongside cryptocurrency’s sell-off that had Bitcoin sweeping to lows under $50k on August 5.

Crypto bulls are thus trying to recover following the market meltdown that included record single-day liquidations of over $1.2 billion. The last time the crypto market witnessed such a bloodbath was during the crash in 2022 as Luna collapsed.

It also happened in March 2020 as the global financial market ran aground amid the Covid pandemic chaos, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan pointed out.

Why did Pendle price surge 40% in 24 hours?

Pendle’s upswing incidentally comes as the broader market also benefits from a decent surge. Bitcoin’s rebound above $55k saw most altcoins in the top 10 by market cap flip green, while several small-cap alts managed double-digit gains.

However, while the overall rise in digital assets prices may be behind the PENDLE price spike, the other catalyst appears to be the major announcement by Upbit.

South Korea’s largest crypto exchange announced support for PENDLE with the Korean won and Bitcoin trading pairs. Both PENDLE/KRW and PENDLE/BTC went live on Upbit on August 6, likely driving the 158% spike in 24-hour volume for PENDLE.

According to CoinGecko, Pendle’s trading volume was over $415 million at 6 am ET.

Ondo Finance price also surges

As well as Pendle, the other tokenized real-world asset protocol to see significant gains was Ondo Finance.

The RWA platform’s native token surged to highs of $0.75, with the ONDO price up more than 34% in 24 hours at the time of writing.

The gains came as BlackRock defied the market crash with another huge move with an $8.1 million USDC deposit on Ondo Finance.

Ondo Finance buyers appear to have welcomed the sentiment boost to help the token’s price with a V-shaped recovery to levels seen before the markets’ crash on Monday.

However, like PENDLE, ONDO remains largely in red and may rely on the broader market’s recovery to extend the latest upside.